Reactions to Scott Walker's withdrawal of marine sanctuary nomination run the gamut

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has considered declaring part of Lake Michigan a national marine sanctuary, a status that could bring shipwrecks and other underwater resources off Wisconsin’s coast under increased protection.
Gary C. Klein/USA TODAY NETWORK - Wisconsin

SHEBOYGAN – Opinions about a national marine sanctuary off Wisconsin’s east coast are running about as broad a gamut as they were before Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker pulled back efforts last month to launch the state-federal initiative aimed at protecting Lake Michigan shipwrecks.

Leaders in local cities who had long backed the proposition have described the governor’s move as shocking and disappointing, hoping it’s merely a setback in what they’ve promised will be persistent efforts to someday land the sanctuary designation.

Opponents, meanwhile, have expressed pleasure in what appears, at least for now, the end of a years-long effort to implement federal regulations in part of Lake Michigan — a move that some had speculated could have threatened the state’s sovereignty and impinged on private landowners’ rights.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), responding to a call in 2014 by Walker to consider installing one of its national marine sanctuaries off Wisconsin’s east coast, had been considering, as recently as early this year, alternate plans to designate swaths between 1,075 and 1,260 square miles between Kewaunee and Ozaukee counties. The sanctuary would have aimed at coupling federal and state initiatives to preserve shipwrecks and other underwater resources, but had drawn strong opposition in recent months from people leery of federal intrusion in the lake.

“This is an actual miracle that this is democracy actually working,” Judith Perlman, a Manitowoc County resident who became part of a groundswell of opposition to the project, said recently.

“I’m very happy that he decided to rescind the nomination,” Jane Hamilton, who lives in southeastern Sheboygan County and had lobbied with Perlman against the proposal, said of the governor.

Hamilton said she began printing brochures and delivering them door-to-door to lakeside residents last March, which is how she met Perlman, after growing concerned by what she was hearing about the proposal.

“Our ships, Wisconsin’s shipwrecks, are already inventoried, catalogued, studied — they can still research them,” Hamilton said, noting she feared NOAA, once it stamped part of the lake with a sanctuary designation, could expand or change its boundaries.

Officials with NOAA, the agency that led federal efforts to formalize a sanctuary designation, had tried tamping down on opponents' concerns last year. Russ Green, the agency official who had helped steer designation efforts in Wisconsin, told a reporter that a sanctuary wouldn’t have involved the state giving up any of its rights or sovereignty. Instead, he said, it would have involved a “co-management” arrangement involving the state and federal governments.

And in an online statement posted to its website last year, NOAA said an “advisory council” comprising members of the public would have helped advise sanctuary management efforts if enacted.

Green directed a reporter’s inquiries last week to Keeley Belva, the acting director of public affairs for NOAA's National Ocean Service. In a statement to USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin, Belva said the agency had reviewed Walker’s letter and was “considering next steps.” Reached later by phone, Belva said she had no more comment on the matter.

The mayors of Sheboygan, Manitowoc and Port Washington sought recently to remind Walker of the purported benefits of a sanctuary. In a letter they sent last month to the governor, the leaders of all three cities said the sanctuary could “build on” the state’s own efforts to protect shipwrecks, as well as boost tourism and economic development.

The proposal, the mayors said, had already brought benefits to the state’s coastal cities. The Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, “in support of the designation effort,” their letter said, spent two weeks last year mapping the lakebed off Manitowoc’s coast. And the same office, in partnership with the Wisconsin Historical Society, had secured a NOAA grant in 2017 to create a website highlighting the region’s shipwrecks, according to the mayors’ letter.

Sheboygan Mayor Mike Vandersteen told listeners at a public discussion last year — and he repeated the assertion in a later interview with a reporter — that the sanctuary could increase tourism spending in Sheboygan, Manitowoc and Ozaukee counties by about $10 million a year.

But opponents had questioned projections suggesting a sanctuary would bring bright financial benefits to the area, and pointed to a University of Michigan study that critics said showed a similar marine sanctuary in Lake Huron had brought little economic benefit to northern Michigan.

Concerned skeptics had also questioned a sanctuary that they said would involve duplicating state and federal shipwreck-preservation efforts. In his letter to NOAA leadership last month, Walker largely echoed those concerns, noting the state was already taking steps to protect historic wrecks and didn’t need federal assistance.

In interviews last year, a few state lawmakers whose districts bordered the proposed sanctuary said they’d also grown critical of the sanctuary proposal.

A spokesman for state Sen. Duey Stroebel, R-Saukville, said the lawmaker agreed with Walker’s decision to withdraw the state’s nomination for a sanctuary, though he said the senator nevertheless supported “the goals of the project” to preserve wrecks.

“Is there another solution here that keeps Wisconsin in the driver's seat?” said Ethan Hollenberger, Stroebel’s communications director, summing up the senator’s position. In a brief discussion with a reporter last year, Stroebel said he shared others’ concerns that a NOAA-backed sanctuary could invite more federal presence in Lake Michigan than the state was prepared to deal with.

State. Rep. Terry Katsma, R-Oostburg, raised similar concerns in an interview last year. Efforts to reach him for this story were unsuccessful.

State Rep. Tyler Vorpagel, R-Plymouth, said last week he’d been supportive of the sanctuary proposal, citing support from tourism, economic and local government officials in communities bordering the would-be sanctuary.

“But, ultimately, it’s his decision to make,” Vorpagel said of the governor.

“I think Gov. Walker made the right decision,” Jim Zeiler, president of sanctuary opposition group Citizens for Responsible Zoning and Landowner Rights, told a reporter last week. “There’ll be a lot of people objecting, but we already have in place all of the tools we need to protect Lake Michigan.”

Perlman said news of Walker's decision felt like vindication for the efforts she and other opponents had undertaken over the past year to push against the proposal. She said her own efforts had started with a small group of people who met last spring to discuss their concerns, and said the group grew into a powerful vehicle of opposition.

“We started out with, like, five citizens who had never met before. You don’t think that’s a miracle?” Perlman said.

“I didn’t think we were going to win,” she said. “I just thought I had to do this because what the government was doing was so wrong, was just so wrong, that I just had to do something.”